Jakarta, Ekuatorial – A new report revealed on Thursday (11/12) Indonesia lost as much as 1.13 million hectares of its natural forest per year.
The report, dubbed as The State of Indonesia’s Forest 2009 – 2013, was set up by Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI), an independent forest watchdog based in Bogor, West Java.
Based on the rate, FWI predicted that Sumatra, Java, Bali-Southeast Nusa, would have completely lost their natural forest cover by 2043. Meanwhile, Kalimantan is predicted to have lost 11 million hectares, from 26 million hectares in 2013 to 15 million hectares in 2043. Rampant deforestation also occurs in Papua where five million hectares are predicted will be gone in 2043.
In total, 73 million hectares of natural forest are being damaged by logging activities, planned land conversion, open access, and management absent in the field. The number is derived from 32 million hectares located in concession areas and 41 million hectares located in protected areas, production forest, and other use areas which yet to have its own management in the field.
As a result, executive director of FWI, Christian Purba, said that the report was underlying much on the government weakness to implement forest management in the country as cause of deforestation.
“Our first and second reports were much talking about culprit of deforestation. However, in this third book, FWI is trying to capture underlying cause of deforestation which reveals weakness of forest management in Indonesia,” said Purba, executive director of FWI at the report launching, in Jakarta.
Purba said that existing forest instruments, including forest certification, forest moratorium, and REDD [Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation], were already good as they were for good purposes. However, he criticized that all implementations have failed ‘in the ground’.
“What we see is more on technical term, such as making sure those logs are legal,” he said. “Meanwhile, forest mismanagement is causing for conflicts, land grabs. You need to solve that first, then do audit and permit review.”
Hariadi Kartodiharjo, a forest policy expert of Bogor Agricultural Institute, said that most of permits issued, either for plantation, mining, or forest industry, have yet to meet their standards.
He cited that plantation needed to obtain for instance release permit, plantation lease before getting permit. Meanwhile, mining permit need to have ‘borrow-to-use’ permit (ijin pinjam pakai). “But, before they obtain those permits, they have started their production,” he said adding that bupati was still allowed to issue permits during 2009-13. “As a result, the government cannot control forest destruction. Rules have changed [for the better] but nothing has changed in the ground.” Fidelis E. Satriastanti